


and it helps to keep me warm

by silver_and_exact



Series: the right feelings [2]
Category: Miami Vice (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Anxiety, Castillo is done with Sonny's shit but also he would absolutely kill for him, Castillo is just the vice squad's scary dad, Depressed Sonny Crockett, Families of Choice, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff without Plot, Gen, Headcanon, Meditation, Probable PTSD, Prophetic Visions, Sonny Crockett is a mess, Stress, Supernatural Elements, Visions in dreams, Yoga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26335564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_and_exact/pseuds/silver_and_exact
Summary: Short, wholesome story wherein Castillo has decided to teach Crockett how to meditate, because that would absolutely happen.This is written within the supernatural-AU universe of "the right feelings" but lacks Plot.
Series: the right feelings [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913677
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	and it helps to keep me warm

“You have to quit smoking for this to have any real impact,” Castillo said in his usual rasping whisper, and Sonny rolled his eyes, rolled a Lucky Strike across his lower lip and pointedly flicked his lighter, feeling juvenile but also justified. 

Somehow, the lieutenant had talked him into learning _yoga,_ or something like it, and he was presently sitting on his lawn and murmuring at Crockett in a tone that Sonny suspected, for Castillo, translated as serene. Privately, the detective thought it might be more unsettling than the man’s customary terseness and unblinking stare, but maybe he was just unused to it. Or maybe Marty, in his short-sleeved button-up and thin black tie, sitting in the lotus position in his socks, eyes closed and whispering at him to _quit smoking_ , was just freaking him the fuck out. Did the guy always have to look like he was en route to a tropical funeral?

“Alright, I draw the line at that—no way am I giving up nicotine for inner peace or whatever,” Sonny said, gesturing vaguely with his cigarette. 

“Smoking is not meditative,” the other man said flatly.

“This _is_ meditation, pal,” he grumbled, tipping ash on the lawn. “Different people have different ways of doing things.” 

“Sonny, the potential damage to your lungs is a liability.”

“Yeah, well, so’s not wearing running shoes sometimes, but I think I still manage to chase people down pretty well in those,” he said glibly, waving a hand in the direction of the white leather loafers that sat nearby in the cropped grass, fully realizing that his clothes were more a part of his cover, of the Burnett costume, than the smoking ever was. Though the smoking was plenty important, too. Calmed him down, gave him something to do with his hands. Made him look like he didn’t give a damn about the state of his lungs. 

“Why don’t you ever talk to Switek and Zito about the cigars?”

Since Crockett and Tubbs had helped rescue Jack Gretzky’s family and had thus effectively deus ex machina’d themselves into Castillo’s permanent good graces, the lieutenant seemed fractionally more lenient with them—with Sonny, really, since he’d admit that he was the harder one to work with. Now Castillo responded to Sonny’s incessant griping with silence more frequently than a disapproving stare and barely-concealed irritation. Sonny sometimes got the nagging feeling that the man _felt bad for him_ , and he didn’t like it, but he figured that they both had some pretty fucked up stuff in their pasts and some ongoing fucked up stuff on their respective horizons, so maybe it was just some weird gesture of respect. Acknowledgement. Pity wasn't really Marty's style, anyways.

And the whole Sonny-having-a-sixth-sense shit probably had something to do with his shift in attitude, too. 

So here he was, learning how to fucking meditate at like 5:00am on his boss’s Floridian zen garden of a lawn, his house all spartan feng shui and books and uncomfortable-looking chairs which Sonny never actually got to sit on because he was always sitting on the damn ground (which was completely unfair, since he didn't own many clothes dark enough to hide grass stains), or stretching, or balancing, or practicing _mindfulness_. Castillo was practically his damn therapist. ...but it was true that Castillo had also told him he should see a therapist. 

Which was probably fair, but what could he actually say to them? Even without the ESP or whatever, his job was incomprehensibly bizarre, horrifying—how many suicides had he witnessed this year alone? How many people he’d cared about had been killed or turned out to be criminals? And then there was everything he wished he could forget about the war… Not to mention that he couldn’t _date_ without worrying that he’d be too distracted by a real relationship to be effective at work. He didn’t think the best therapist in the world would be able to relate, and he knew that they probably wouldn’t _have_ to in order to be helpful, but it’d make him a hell of a lot more likely to give it a try if they could.

When he had a house, it wasn’t like this. When he had a family. Or it wasn’t quite as bad. He’d always been too focused on work, sure, and he’d always drank a little more than he should. But he’d had people to go home to. A separate space that had nothing to do with being a detective. But now, his house was a drug dealer’s boat (albeit a nice boat), his roommate was an alligator, his car was owned by the police, and his wife and son were in another state. The delineation between his cover and his Actual Life was getting… blurry. And somehow, even though he had no real expenses, he was still flat broke. 

Another thing he couldn’t tell a therapist about: the dreams. Categorically knowing that people were probably going to die on any given day put a real damper on his mental health. But he could tell Castillo. And once he started telling him, started telling Tubbs, it felt _good_. He didn’t have this fucking secret anymore; they knew who they were talking to when they were talking to him, and they didn’t think he was lying or being crazy. He felt less like his personality was something he was making up, not Burnett, not the version of Sonny Crockett who had his act (somewhat) together, who didn’t have cold spells and wasn’t regularly scared shitless by his dreams. Some freewheeling divorcee who could make the boat/alligator/married-to-his-job situation seem _fun_. 

He’d believed himself to be too cynical for catharsis, but his dual disclosure to Rico about his… not-complete-straightness and the thing with the dreams and dream-adjacent stuff had been strangely reassuring. It had just kind of… comfortably enfolded into their repertoire of conversational material, even _joke_ material, without Sonny getting defensive. And his partner's repertoire of things he could have one of his _insights_ about. The guy was always, out of the blue, offering up a piece of advice, asking a question Crockett hadn't asked himself and hadn't thought to ask himself. New, suspiciously-helpful, good-looking guy appears and volunteers his mob connections for a case? "Don't fall for him, Crockett, alright?" Sonny catches a chill while they're out on the open ocean? "It's actually a little cold right now—probably nothing to worry about, man."

And Castillo was helping, too, even if his new peace-and-harmony campaign was sometimes a lot to handle. He was trying to get him to clear his mind, parse out the useful stuff from the tangle of anxiety and generally overwhelming bad feelings that came along with his career in regularly observing and participating in nightmarish, improbable events. And yeah, it probably wouldn’t hurt for Marty to have a detective working for him that could… know a little more than the average guy, but Sonny was still doubtful he’d ever be genuinelu useful on that front. 

He sometimes wondered if it was fucked up that these people were basically his family. But Sonny was always at work, and at work, Castillo was kind of like… his dad. A hell of a lot nicer than his old man had ever been, a statement he imagined people would find borderline unbelievable, someone calling the lieutenant _nice_. But he put up with Sonny’s bullshit, he somehow hadn’t fired him or Tubbs or anyone on the squad, really, when the job got a little too personal and they did something… extralegal. He had their backs. And now he was teaching Sonny how to meditate, and if he really thought it would help, Crockett supposed he could stand the inconvenience. 

“Alright,” Sonny looked to Castillo and sighed with the put-upon, slightly incredulous air of a man about to part with something priceless at a bargain, “Maybe I’ll cut back a little—how does half a pack a day sound?”

And if the lieutenant smiled, just a little, it was probably a trick of the light from the sunrise.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Take Me Home by Phil Collins because I am the worst at titling and was grasping at 80s lyrics straws.
> 
> Okay, so I have a whole elaborate headcanon about Castillo, who is possibly my favorite character. I think Tubbs and Crockett need to try to find him a date ("Hey, uh, Marty--there wouldn't happen to be any other people you were in love with that were presumed dead, would there? 'Cause we're kind of 0 for 2 on them... actually being dead.") and the blind date they drum up happens to be another man/woman Castillo was under the impression exploded in some jungle in southeast Asia. The whole vice squad is bisexual, fight me.
> 
> Also, somebody please draw me manga-style fanart of the whole vice squad at Disney - Sonny & Rico bookending a very cross-looking Castillo, Crockett is holding a snow cone, at least one of their arms is over his shoulders and Castillo is wearing an ill-fitting "I <3 Disney" shirt that is clearly pulled over his customary short-sleeved button-up and skinny tie. Tubbs is definitely wearing the mouse ears. Gina is taking the picture and is definitely wearing a fanny pack, and Trudy is holding a huge cotton candy and poised to take a large bite out of it. Switek is nearby, puzzling over an unfolded park map, while Zito is grabbing his sleeve and pointing at a ride with profound excitement. 
> 
> ALSO the full squad on a roller coaster having a great time and Castillo just looking tense and dead. Bonus points if Switek is attempting to eat a corndog while on the ride. 
> 
> It is late in the night and I am getting weird and obsessive and silly again. Thank you to whoever humors me during this trying time in my life, where I talk about Miami Vice constantly to people who don't give a fuck about it because barely any of my peers are watching Miami Vice in the year of our lord 2020.
> 
> Oh, and another thing - I'm at the beginning of season 3 now, so apologies if Sonny's Actual Dad is discussed in the future and isn't an abusive prick, but I imagine Sonny has a terrible dad. He goes all Bud White in LA Confidential over violence against women, and sure, he could do that sans abusive dad, but this man does not strike me as someone who had a cuddly, supportive family life growing up.


End file.
